


A Worthy Opponent

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Gen, Possibly Pre-Slash, Rivalry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-21
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-04-05 12:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4180353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The day after Gavin's firing, Big Head reaches out. It doesn't have the intended effect.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Worthy Opponent

**Author's Note:**

> Proud to be part of the NelsonBelson renaissance. (1 week into the hiatus!)

You put your heart and soul into a company, gave those greedy, grasping motherfuckers everything that was in you, made it _great_ , and this was the thanks they gave you: escorted off your own campus by security, and the contents of your office dumped in your driveway by your moon-faced goon of a former assistant.

Gavin sneered down at him, glad of the additional height afforded him by the top step, and ignoring the part of himself that wished he wasn’t scruffy-haired and wearing yesterday’s clothes.

“Et tu, Jared?”

The man gave him a tight smile, with no sign of the crushing guilt he’d hoped to inflict. “Once again, and hopefully for the last time, my name is Simon. Sign here, please?” His expression didn’t flicker as Gavin described, at some length, what he could do with his tablet and his stylus and his signature. “Totally fine. Your call. I’ll take the crate back to Hooli, and security will make sure everything’s recycled, freecycled or upcycled, as appropriate. Have a nice morning, Gavin.”

“Wait, wait!”

It took three tries, and near-destruction of the screen, to get a legible signature. Piece of shit Hoolipad.

“Oh – and Mr Bighetti asked me to pass this along.”

‘This’ was a yellow envelope, thin paper, ‘Gavin Belson’ scrawled on it in Sharpie. He took it curiously. He’d been expecting some gloating message from the new CEO, but hardcopy, really?

“If this is a photocopy of his balls,” he started to say, but Jared was already halfway down the drive.

The cleaning staff had been and gone while he slept, and since he wasn’t normally home on a weekday there was nobody on duty till five, so he left the crate in the drive and went looking for the kitchen.

He was opening the envelope at arm’s-length over the sink when his pants bleeped. He snatched his phone out of his pocket, fumbling off the screen lock – but it was only a push notification, a Google alert on his own name.

Gavin read three results, and then he dropped the phone down the garbage disposal and listened to the chewing, grinding noise of dying technology with grim satisfaction.

When it was done, the house seemed very quiet.

Four bourbons and three Judge Judys later, he remembered the mystery letter. He hadn’t watched broadcast television in years, and his couch was the size of a kingsize bed, so it took two more commercial breaks before he could work up the energy to get up and trek back to the kitchen.

The letter was lying in the sink, where he’d dropped it, perfectly clean and dry – as far as he knew this wasn’t one of the kitchens the chefs actually used – and he ripped it open, not caring any more if Bighetti had filled it with glitter or anthrax or any other fucking thing to ruin his life even further.

It was a card, garish and cheap-looking, the kind of thing he imagined was probably sold in a 7-eleven. There was a cartoon cat on it, with a sad expression on its face and a speech bubble coming out of its mouth that said “Sorry You’re Leaving!”

He would have been far, far less astonished by the anthrax.

“Good luck in pastures _mew_!” was printed on the inside. There was uneven handwriting all around it.

_Hi Mr Belson/Gavin_

_I don’t totally understand what just happened but Simon said you’d left the company? And that he’s my assistant now?_

Gavin frowned, wondering who the fuck this ‘Simon’ was, or why he was telling Bighetti his business.

_I know you only promoted me that first time to screw over Richard, and I guess everything else was about the lawsuit, but things have been amazing for me this year, and that’s down to you. Even if you didn’t mean it to be._

_Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you, for everything. And I hope things work out okay for you._

_Sorry, I tried to get other people to sign this, but they were probably busy. It’s pretty crazy here!!_

_\- Nelson (Bighetti)_

Beneath that it said,

_(Big Head)_

and beneath that,

_(Bag Head)_

And there was a phone number, squeezed into the corner like an afterthought.

Gavin had studied deep breathing exercises with some of the most experienced and most expensive yoga masters in the world, and he pulled on every ounce of that training now. A lesser man might have had a heart attack or a stroke from this kind of provocation, but he was Gavin fucking Belson. If anything, it gave him a new sense of purpose.

What the fuck was he doing, moping around watching daytime television like a sadsack when he’d just had his company stolen from under his nose? Oh, he hadn’t put the pieces together before but this brilliant, _masterful_ piece of graceful faux-compassion for a defeated opponent was a step too far, and it was Bighetti’s first mistake.

He’d seemed so harmless. So utterly easily to manipulate. Small and fluffy and doe-eyed and vacant-looking, and Gavin had never considered for a second that it was all an act, all a cover for a razor-sharp mind and a colossal ambition. Keyser Soze with a Double-Gulp.

“Mother _fuck_ ,” Gavin breathed.

He’d been chasing his tail all these months, pursuing Pied Piper when the Hendricks kid – he could see it all so clearly now – was just a patsy. Bighetti had been the mastermind all along. He’d planned it all. The promotions, Nucleus, the lawsuit, keeping his own hands clean while Gavin sank deeper and deeper.

And now, he had Gavin’s job and Gavin’s company and he was still wasn't done toying with him. Taunting him. Why else would he leave that number? He was _daring_ him to stay in the game.

Gavin stood the card up on the kitchen counter. Let his housekeeping staff think it was an odd moment of sentimentality. He’d know it for what it was: a declaration of war.

The kid might be smart, but he was about to learn how the real masters played.

Just as soon as Gavin found himself a new phone.

**Author's Note:**

> It's probably an innocuous enough phrase not to ping anyone as plagiarism, but just in case: Gavin's "new sense of purpose" is a nod to my other main fandom, Arrested Development, and GOB's season 4 plotline, because arrogant, aggressive rich men setting out on ill-advised revenge schemes against imagined enemies who haven't actually intentionally hurt them is apparently my jam. Credit to Mitch Hurwitz.


End file.
